12 comments

Dave in yer face Trott on the money!! Whisper it but SELLING YOUR PRODUCT IS OK. People should spend more time being proud of the work then tv ads can regain their place as being ‘better than most programmes’

Dave,
I’ve always felt Advertising is Art for the Common Man.
Not sure if i committed any category errors there let alone grammatical ones and any implied sexism or classism, is that a word?
Anyway, how about ‘Ads are for the everyday’, OK?

“Art for the common man” works for me.
Just like: Brian Clough, Steve Jobs, Mohammed Ali, Steven Spielberg, Banksy, George Best, many more.
IMHO art is quality in what you do that elevates it above the ordinary.
It’s not just something that goes in galleries for art critics.

I didn’t read the original article so this might all be bollocks, but isn’t the complaint about feature writers or journalists writing pieces that are basically ads without the acknowledgement? Puffery, in other words?

I go along with that. That’s why I take mainstream travel writing with a piece of salt, along with all those ‘Ten Best Headphones’ page-fillers. PR is a far more insidious activity than advertising.

The writers of these pieces don’t worry they may compromise their artistic integrity. Journalistic integrity, yes. They might worry about that, but they cash the cheque regardless.

Where does the art bit come from, exactly? It feels like it belongs in a different blog post.

Kevin,
I’ve probably conflated the two things.
But my position is that disguising advertising is done by people who are ashamed of advertising, and trying to pretend it’s something else.
They think they can slide advertising past the punters as long as they don’t realise it’s advertising.
So they pretend it’s journalism, art, news, opinion, whatever.
It isn’t good advertising and it isn’t good journalism (or art, or whatever).
It’s a bad version of everything.
And worse, it’s boring.

Dave, what’s your opinion on celebrity endorsement ads? If the “idea” is the celebrity I find that boring too but also insulting. It assumes people are lemmings that will buy the product because that famous person uses this product. Apart from Clooney in Nespresso I can’t recall any commercial that made sense using a celebrity.

My understanding is that everything we do is about selling and buying.
Dave Trott shows me his interesting post and I pay attention to it.
I give my daughter a smile and she replied it back with hers.
I help my company by doing some jobs and they pay me.
So yes, being ashamed of selling is odd.

Parvez,
If the celebrity is part of the idea then it works, if they’re just decoration then it’s what the Americans call ‘video vampire’: you remember the celebrity not the brand or product.
IMHO, Beckham for whiskey (can’t remember which one) is the video vampire effect.